


double date

by Darkfromday



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Frosthawk - Freeform, Loki Angst, Loki Feels, Loki is a dick to the people of Earth, M/M, Sad Ending, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Thor is a dick in the way that all kids are dicks, actually nevermind everyone is horrible to everyone, like for real do not read this if you are not trying to be sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 11:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8205530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkfromday/pseuds/Darkfromday
Summary: Loki has two dates around his wrist that forecast when he'll met his soulmate, instead of one--as if he needed to be different in any other ways. This was not going to end well for him.





	

Thor was an asshole. It was a proven fact now. Put him and his brother in an outside situation with sparring and with his bulky, fight-lusting friends, and he bent over and turned into a gigantic ass.

Loki decided that firmly and irrevocably after about the fortieth such occurrence, no different from the last thirty-nine times except in how fast he’d been able to escape once more and yet different taunts were thrown his way. It was no huge deal now to be teased about how his sword and hand-to-hand skills weren’t up to precious Thor’s level, but this time the blonde bitch and the ‘Warriors Three’ had gone too far in searching for ways to get under his skin.

As if having a proclivity for magic and not fist-throwing wasn’t enough, he’d always had two dates in a ring around his wrist—the date he’d meet his soulmate, perhaps the only person in the Nine Realms who _wouldn’t_ treat Loki like shit. But while one of them was written in the standard Asgard had made prevalent ( _Harpa, Sumardagurinn fyrsti,_ the first day of summer), the other was in a format and language he wasn’t even sure existed ( _1 May 2012_ ). Most people only had the one format, and it didn’t encircle the entire wrist—even Thor’s date of doom was solely in one script, proclaiming his meeting would come in the dead of winter sometime even farther off than Loki’s.

He seethed over the unfairness of it all now, locked in his room, kicking cushions aside and angrily throwing blades to stick in his wall once more. How was it fair to belittle him over something he couldn’t control, the _one thing_ he couldn’t control, or manipulate or prank or lie his way out of? The only truth Loki Odinson had to subscribe to, big as day on his dominant hand, destined to grow back even if he severed it or otherwise lost visibility. What did it matter if a different language was used? Perhaps his mate was bilingual, or trilingual. Perhaps his mate hailed from a place just as advanced as Asgard, only more secretive.

Or perhaps Sif and Volstagg and Hogun and Fandral could all go straight to Hel because their opinions on the matter _didn’t_ matter anyway. They were all stuck with future-mates too, only it was likelier that their parents knew (and were arranging as he seethed) exactly who they’d be hitching every last one of those monsters to.

None of these thoughts worked. He was _still_ angry—so much so that he’d picked up another cushion, ready to hurl it, stopping only when he heard a knock, a whoosh of magic, and encountered his mother’s startled face instead.

“ _Mother_ —sorry—”

Frigga only looked amused. “Your finest cushion wars usually happen with your brother present.”

Sullen, he immediately curled in on himself, thrusting the offending item away. “I don’t want to talk about _Thor_.” _Everyone does that enough already_.

“I saw you leave the training grounds. What did they say to upset you?”

“Nothing of consequence.”

“Loki—”

The lie had rolled off easily at first, but her prodding (even well-intentioned as it was) only served to stoke and stir his ire; he wasn’t a child any longer, and (as Odin had said a hundred times now) no longer had the _right_ to disturb the queen’s skirts with his sobbing. She might want to take him backward but that was a luxury he could no longer afford. “I said _it’s nothing_! Nothing I cannot handle.”

“Then why do you have a death grip on your wrist?”

 _Damn!_ Circling those double dates again. It was a nervous habit that Loki had recently acquired, and not yet kicked. Too terrible of a tell. “I—”

“Loki.” She sounded sympathetic now. That made his insides curl even worse, which made lying much more difficult—especially to her.

“I just—why must I be singled out in this way on top of everything else? I don’t even know why—are these two dates? Do I have two soulmates? Is one going to get tired of me and leave, or die? Why would anyone have _two_ —?!”

Frigga sat and pulled him down with her. Kept her voice soothing. “You know I have looked into your markings, as much as any mother and Seer can. And the dates are the same, my love. The two writings are not different times. It’s doubtful that you have _two_ other ones out there as confused as you.”

“ _Great_.”

“This does not soothe your nerves?”

Loki burst out, “Why must I be different at _all_?” It was a losing fight, all the time. Trying to please Odin, trying to get stronger, trying to fit in with Thor and his monstrous crew, trying to be the perfect prince and future ruler of Asgard… and all with these two notable, ridiculous dates ringing his hand. He tried so hard to be the same as everyone else, only to consistently be singled out.

His mother didn’t respond immediately at first. She pulled him closer instead, and ran her fine fingers through his hair, letting him calm down and feel ashamed all on his own, just like always. Loki bit his lip, chewed on it a bit, but didn’t repeat his question.

Finally she spoke, more quietly than before. “Being different is not so terrible. Asgard is comprised of kings and subjects. A future king is always different from his subjects. The deviances make him unique and significant, and bring him followers.” She smoothed his hair back into a regal wave, turned his wrist over to show the date with foreign lettering. “This one will bring you a partner. It is nothing more than that.”

_And how many more hundreds of years must I be different from everyone before the person fate has picked for me comes in and keeps me from being alone?_

When his mother questioningly met his eyes, though, Loki just nodded as though he understood and felt better. As usual, there was no use worrying her with his perpetual isolation and bitterness about his treatment in his own home. The only hope was that adulthood would be kinder to him—or that he could change things as king.

 

Adulthood came and went. It was horrendous.

In short, Loki discovered that he was adopted after his brother was banished by his well-meaning prank; then his ‘father’ decided that a nap was due before reassuring his son that he wasn’t just a bargaining chip for a future chess move. Surprise, his mother had known about it all the whole time as well, yet hadn’t seen a problem in allowing him to believe that he could grow up one day and be king, or at least make things better for crown and kingdom! Hilarious.

All Thor’s friends turned against him, he lost his head and tried to make _himself_ the only monster of his kind in all the realms, and then father dearest rejected his last attempt to salvage the legitimacy of his short-lived reign.

Once he’d learned why he was so different, so subpar compared to all of Asgard—why _wouldn’t_ he have let go of them?

He suffered through Thanos and the Chitauri with silence, mostly. It seemed nothing less than what he’d deserved, and yet not what he deserved at all. The darkness of nothingness; the absence of time, space, warmth, love. The date on his wrist smudged ink and blood, and was scratched at by disregarding claws, but still reformed itself almost pristinely on his battered body—a consistent reminder that someone out there was connected to him, might treat him kindly. But Loki didn’t know how close that date was to reality until he was cleaned, dusted, dressed, handed the Tesseract and thrust back into the freezing grip of space-time.

He agreed to turn his back on traitorous Asgard, and rule the realms under a new banner. Never a king, but a soldier, something close enough. A high standard for a Jötun bastard to achieve.

Their first target would be Midgard—and Loki’s insides twisted with mixed nausea and glee, because _Thor’s precious Earth_. How exciting, to know at last what it felt like to subjugate and humiliate _others_ for being different, for being supposedly _weaker_ than their conquerors. He hoped Asgard saw and choked on the irony.

When his strength and bravado returned, he distanced himself from his army and his liege, casting watching fingers and eyes toward the planet he would rule. The habit of clutching and tracing the date around his wrist came back with a vengeance, subconsciously. The time was close enough to taste, now. Whiling away some of the time between lost in torture and reprogramming had given him a ray of light—soon another would share his pain, and load upon him theirs, for all of time.

 

Loki stepped through the portal and his wrist tingled; but he didn’t look. There was no more time left before he met his soulmate, who could be any of the men or women in this room.

When the time had dipped below one day as he waited beyond the Tesseract’s other side, he had somehow known, with a sinking feeling, that the reason for his decades of loneliness was beyond. His other half was of Midgard, a mayfly in the eye of time—someone who might match him in all but lifespan, one of the only things that truly mattered. Even fate had spat upon him in the end.

So he didn’t glance down, much as he might want a bit more direction. He could not afford to be distracted if he wanted to be king of this feeble place.

Instead, he smirked when asked to surrender his new spear, and  _attacked_.

Taking most of the flies in the room down was child’s play. Knives, spear, presence served to overwhelm them. A couple were giving him problems—the man with one eye, who was strangely impervious to his frontal assault. Loki quickly realized that that was due to the other one—a blond and black blur who herded Not-Odin about, ducked his blasts and shot back at him at every opportunity, with disturbingly good aim.

He would have to be neutralized.

Loki loosed his rage, destroying nearly all the instruments in the room with a pulse of power and knocking all his opponents to the ground.

It was almost gratifying when the blond one got back up, because he’d already been heading over to subdue him. Fight like that was wasted here, now that the cube would be leaving with him. Loki snatched him up, halted his movements, knowing he would be glad to serve a new purpose later, if not now.

The other struggled; but when Loki turned their wrists together to mostly disable his arm, he froze, his eyes linked to the hand Loki had around the spear. Loki almost _laughed_ — _Does he think he can stop_ me _?_ —but he expended that energy giving the soldier a compliment instead, before taking him as his own.

So he was late in seeing the man’s wrist, as the other had seen his. When he did, the writing was so clear he thought he had gone mad.

Asgardian script, matching his own. Dated today…

On the other side, the script in that language Loki had taken years to learn to read, to puzzle over, to loathe, to long for. _1 May 2012_.

Loki had…

 _No_.

Loki had to turn away, to focus all his attentions on stopping the one-eyed man from taking his Tesseract and burying him alive in the desert. He had to turn away and take other servants, men and women he would need in the days ahead if his invasion were to work. He had to keep moving, keep fighting, keep lying, as a distraction. To keep from learning his other half’s name. To keep from thinking of how many years the man must have waited, perhaps silently hoping, only to be violated by one thought beyond methods of violation.

Thus, it was not until late the next day that Loki realized how cruelly and thoroughly the Norns had punished him ( _punished the both of them_ ).

When his first devoted slave returned to his side in their base to make plans, and introduced himself as an archer-soldier called Clint Barton, then he was able to absorb how horribly his first meeting with the other half of his coin had gone.

He had enslaved his soulmate with magic.

He had subdued the man’s will and individuality; he might as well be conversing with an automaton now for all the similarities it might show to the true man underneath.

Loki had compromised the only person in all the Nine Realms who might have slowed down to try and understand him, side with him organically. The chance for that was gone now, whether the subjugation of Midgard succeeded or crumbled to ash.

He dismissed Barton for the night with a bite in his voice, and only let himself succumb to despair when he was sure the archer was gone.

A ring of twin dates on his wrist, and hundreds of years of solitude for naught.

All was ash.

Loki was still alone.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, this is #25 on this list: http://darkfromday.tumblr.com/post/150934803411/andhungry-soulmate-au-prompts-send-a-number
> 
> Please feel free to correct my Norse.


End file.
